"Technically we had to figure out how to achieve the upside down effect without creating an entire set", said producer Tim Berriman.

Says Bull: "I wanted to capture as much in camera as possible with puppetry and carefully timed camera motion we were able to give the illusion of the house turning and the pull of gravity. It was a real challenge to visually communicate this idea. The size of our set meant we decided to focus on little close-up moments rather than expansive wide shots, giving the spot a quirky personality and sense of comedic drama."

Post production for the spot was done through d'Luscious.

Says VFX supervisor Chris Grocott: "This was a really fun and challenging brief. Obviously we wanted to make it as realistic as possible. To achieve this we projected the real textures of the house onto a 3d model using maya dynamics to get the right animation for the house. Having access to all the production equipment meant we could duck out and get the right swaying tree, flying bird or flying rock texture to composite into the shot."

11 Comments

Remember the 80's 90's, even a couple of years ago.. when we could all do Big commercials properly. Now that there is less money, less time, (suite) paranoia, ad's like this are being made with shortcuts showing through. With no fault of Luscious.
If people (suites and clients) didn't leave things to the last minute to sign off and giving the poor director and production company more time to polish, it then could have been better.

Chris, using projection was a good time/budget conscious idea but it's a shame you didn't plan for the lighting differences for when things are upside down. It really adds to the why the exterior of the upside down house doesn't look right, apart from being upside down that is. Repainting with no lighting on that projected texture would have made a huge difference, even just knocking out the heavy shadows from the eaves that are really off putting. That way you could have relit with new shadows that changed with the movement rather than staying fixed. You solved the perspective shifts with the projections but the fixed texture with the baked in lighting lets it down. The interior works much better with the keylight on the boy matching the upside down room. I would have downplayed "the reason we used projection was to keep it photoreal" because it actually hindered in parts and it doesn't really talk up your teams ability to do photoreal CG. Some nice stuff too though and budgets and time are always no good nowadays so it's not a criticism.

I was part of one the competing teams bidding, so I know what the budget, schedule and brief was for this job. I think Tina did a good job and the creatives should be pleased with the results. Client hoops and mandatories have been well negotiated...

Does anybody have anything good to say, ever? What happened to supporting each other? To constructive criticism? Really makes me hate this industry, always pulling others down to make ourselves feel better about what we are doing. It's advertising, nobody gets it right every time. Really, is this the best we can be?